Wrist Assured

Brad Jackson of Plano, Texas mostly wore his smartwatch for walks and runs. When it buzzed to say his pulse had dropped to 32 beats per minute, about half of normal, he figured it was a glitch and went on with his day. It happened again, so he finally went in to get it checked, and that is when he found out he had bradycardia. He ended up needing a pacemaker to keep his heart from slowing down too far.

He is not the only one. A woman discovered she had a dangerous blood clot after her watch flagged her resting heart rate at 178, and some watches can now call for help on their own if they think someone has taken a hard fall.

The strange part is that nobody set out to build a blood clot detector. Those watches were only counting steps and heartbeats, and the features that end up saving people keep turning out to be side effects of measuring something ordinary.

Your Task: You get to decide what the watch notices next.

1. The Invention
Invent one thing a smartwatch could notice about a person that no watch notices today. It does not have to be about health. It could catch bad air quality before anyone feels it, or notice that the person driving you home is getting drowsy, or pick up that you have not spoken to a single person all day. Name yours, and say what it notices.

2. Who It Finds
Describe one specific person whose life would be different because your invention existed. It could be someone you know, or someone whose life looks nothing like yours. (1 to 2 sentences.)

3. The Signal
Decide how the watch actually tells them. It does not have to be words on a screen, and it could be a vibration pattern, a sound, a color, a drawing, a code, or something nobody has tried yet. Describe it. (Small enough to fit on a watch.)